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| The Ladies of the '80s: A Divas Christmas cast (l-r): Donna Mills, Loni Anderson, Linda Gray, Morgan Fairchild and Nicollette Sheridan, with writer Stan Zimmerman at The Maybourne Hotel, Beverly Hills, CA, November 28, 2023. |
Must Hear TV: Where did the idea come from, to do a Christmas movie for Lifetime, reuniting divas from the ‘80s? How did it all come together?
Stan Zimmerman: I have to give credit to Jason Wood, who is now head of casting at Lifetime. He was the casting assistant on the very first pilot Jim Berg and I wrote, and then became our assistant. We've remained in touch, and we were talking about him coming to see a production I just directed in Los Angeles of the play “The Diary of Anne Frank,” with a cast of predominantly Latinx actors, because I wanted him to discover some of those talents that he didn’t yet know. When we were talking one day, he mentioned, “There’s a project here at Lifetime – would you mind if I threw your hat in the ring, for you and Jim to pitch for this?” He told me the basics they already had: they had a deal with five iconic actresses, and wanted a Christmas movie, which had to be shot in just thirteen days, and in only one location. I said, “Give me 24 hours.” And then Jim and I came back in 24 hours and pitched ideas for the film to the producer, Larry Thompson. This was so on-brand for Jim and me, right up our alley! So we were bursting with ideas.
MHTV: That’s all they had at that point? Unite these women in a Christmas movie?
SZ: Yes. The rest was up to us. The hardest part was the one-location thing. We could redress that one location, so it could be a mansion, it could be a hotel. All the rooms could be turned into other locations. We could use the parking lot, or shoot a scene in a car in the driveway. But it had to be shot in one location in 13 days. This was in March of 2023. Jim and I were in Dallas, about to world premiere our play, “Silver Foxes,” and so our heads were in that space. But we knew this was an opportunity we just couldn't pass up. And so we pitched maybe six or seven ideas, and Larry Thompson liked all of them. And then something happened that you don't hear very often: he said to us, the writers, “What do you guys want to do?” With the time crunch, the idea that really jumped out as our favorite was based on what all these women are known for, and that was soap operas. Almost all of them had started on, or at one time were on a daytime soap opera. I was an ABC soap freak as a kid: All My Children, One Life to Live, General Hospital. I did some research and found out like Donna Mills had started in a soap called Love is a Many Splendored Thing, a CBS show back in the day.
MHTV: Never mind Knots Landing! In your mind and Jim’s, is this more based on
daytime soap or primetime? Because when I see names like Donna Mills,
Nicollette Sheridan, Morgan Fairchild and Linda Gray, I think of primetime soaps.
SZ: Yes. But the concept for the film was that, because all of these daytime soap operas are being canceled, there was a daytime soap opera called “The Great Lakes.” And at one time or another, all of the divas were on that show. Now, the show is being canceled. Jim and I have often wondered, why are daytime soap operas not as popular anymore? Why haven’t they been reinvented? So for our movie, what if they come back for one final Christmas episode, done live. And play off of their daytime diva and nighttime diva images. And with those crazy storylines that daytime soap operas have, we thought it'd be really fun and campy. In our minds, that was what the audience would be craving. When they heard about these five ladies coming together, they’d want those bitchy lines. They want the slapfest. They want the crazy storylines. So Larry agreed, Lifetime agreed, and we made a deal very quickly. And off we went to writing. We had so little time, that there were days when I was at the Golden Girls convention “GoldenCon” in Chicago this past March where I would have to go up to my hotel room on breaks and meet Jim on Zoom to write some scenes and bang out that first draft. Because we had a deadline of May 1, which was the writers' strike. So we knew: computers off May 1.
MHTV: And that is a crazy short time to write a movie.
SZ: It’s a crazy short time to write an email. Because there are so many levels of people that have to weigh in. It’s not just, “it’s March, Jim and Stan, write whatever you want.” You have to write outlines. And I wanted an outline to be approved. I hate wasting time when I'm writing. So I wanted everybody to sign off first. Jim and I are experienced veterans at this, and they were actually going to give us more latitude, to go off and write, but I was very adamant about, “No, you're seeing an outline” -- or what we call a beat sheet, which is kind of an abbreviated outline -- to sign off on the basic beats of the plot. That way, after getting approval, we could then write scenes quickly. I always think that's easier.
I love the structure part of developing scripts. For some reason, my mind just thinks that way. On sitcoms, I would always be the one taking writers off into a room and do what we call beating out the story and the structure of it. So once we got the structure, that pretty much stayed the same. And we wrote really, really quickly. I think that was one of the solid points of hiring us as writers, because we kept saying to them, “We're used to writing fast on sitcoms,” where sometimes a script gets thrown out on the day of a rehearsal, and you have to be rehearsing a different script the next morning. So you might have to do a page-one rewrite sometimes. From all the shows that we've been on, from Golden Girls to Gilmore Girls and Roseanne, or Rita Rocks for Lifetime, we’ve experienced every single thing you can imagine. Here, luckily, they were happy and we didn't get a ton of notes. Because on May 1, we had to stop. We would love to have continued working, and to have gone on set. I kept joking to Jim, “I'll dress as a grip, and I’ll have a mustache and a hat and overalls or something, and just stand behind a potted plant.” Of course I couldn’t do that, because of the strike. But we were able to talk to the actresses on the phone during our writing process, to get their notes. And that was really cool.
MHTV: How much were the actresses able to shape their
characters?
SZ: Quite a bit. Before they signed off, they all either had phone calls – one of the original actresses who was going to be in the movie, Joan Collins, sent in written notes, because she was in England -- but with the others, we got on the phone and had long conversations that were really interesting.
MHTV: And was that a dream for you? Had you met all of these women before?
SZ: I had not met most of them, which was crazy, because most of them hadn't done sitcoms, except Loni Anderson. I had met Joan Collins, when Jim and I had developed a show for her. We always thought she was really funny. And she ended up being on Roseanne, but not when we were there. But because people are obsessed with royalty in America, so we pitched a show for her and Rupert Everett as royalty that had to flee their country with nothing but their titles, and then came to America, and were scamming in Beverly Hills. And she loved it. And we spent time with her in her home in Beverly Hills. We happened to be in Europe and went to her house in London. That story is in my book…
MHTV: Which
is…?
SZ: The Girls: From Golden to Gilmore. It’s the story about all the wonderful women that I've worked with. And Roseanne. There is a section about the developments that we had with so many wonderful women, and that that chapter is called “The Next Lucy,” because all of these actresses that we would meet with, from Joan Collins to Teri Hatcher to Miss Diana Ross, they all said at one point in the meeting, “I want to be the next Lucy.” And we all know there can never be another Lucy. It’s a tall order. But we felt we could tap into what was funny about Joan Collins and her dry, very Oscar Wilde sensibility. But unfortunately, the show never came to be.
When we spoke with all the actresses, they gave us ideas on how to deepen their characters. And because we had really studied a lot of their interviews online, we pulled from their real stories. So for example, we found out that Donna Mills had adopted a child, so we put that into the character -- but we bumped it up to where she had adopted five or six children, in the Angelina Jolie or Madonna category. And another actress who was originally going to be part of the cast, Jaclyn Smith, is such an entrepreneur. So we created a storyline about giving up a lot of show business to start her own businesses. And has she been so obsessed that she has neglected relationships?
Ultimately, because of the actors’ strike, they literally had a very short window to film this. So the good part was they had to film the script we wrote. But the bad part was that it was hard for the actresses to rearrange their schedules with short notice, and so Joan and Jaclyn dropped out, even though they loved the script. After that, Morgan Fairchild switched roles and ended up playing the one written for Joan. No fool, she knew where the jokes were! And she does have a lot of one-liner zingers that are going to make memes one day, I just know it. I’m hoping. On the level of some of the other lines Jim and I have written, like “Sure, Jan,” from The Brady Bunch Movie, or from The Golden Girls, “No, no, I will not have a nice day,” which I see all the time, people imitating it, which is really cute. This is a very different kind of Lifetime Christmas movie, because A, it’s a comedy. But there is a lot of romance in there. There are some very heartfelt moments as well. I have to admit, I get a little teary at the end. I wasn't sure if I wanted to put in a part about how the young male lead was affected by his mother's passing. But it's something I'm still dealing with. And I realized that not only would it be therapeutic for me, but maybe for other people as well.
MHTV: Of course.
The holidays are when everybody thinks about relatives they've lost.
SZ: So there's a line in there, when the guy says, “A part of me died when she died.” And especially during the holidays, and not being with her on Thanksgiving, this year was pretty difficult for me. So I was glad that they allowed us to keep lines like that in there. Also, it was fun to name the young lead female after my niece, Nell. That’s always fun to do.
MHTV: Speaking of the names, I love the device of giving all the characters the names of their famous TV characters, like Ewing and Cunningham and Marlowe.
SZ: It's honoring their past, and what they bring so beautifully to this project. And I think that's why this storyline works so well, because when they arrive, they literally come with a lot of baggage, but also good baggage from their long careers in this genre.
MHTV: With your writing background, obviously, people
might get a sense of The Golden Girls from this movie – although on The
Golden Girls, Rue McClanahan was only 51 when the pilot was made. Here,
everyone in this movie is older than that. And yet they're still vital, and
they're still playing sexy roles. In what ways, consciously or maybe even
subconsciously, were you affected by your Golden Girls experience when
creating this movie?
SZ: Well, that was such an important part of Golden Girls, showing these women as vital and sexual and working and with relationships and conflicts. And I know that's an important part for Donna Mills, that she wants to show that you don't have to just sit in a corner after 60. You can sit in a corner if you want to, but you can also go off and make a Jordan Peele movie like Donna did. And I really respect that about her. That's been the theme in our work, that no matter what age, you keep living. And every day you wake up, and the joy that I have of jumping out of bed. Although sometimes now I make some grunting noises.
We wanted to give all these characters jobs and emotions, and love. To have Linda Gray be with hot Christopher Atkins! As a gay man, I remember being young and watching The Blue Lagoon. I think I looked at pictures of him in that for a long time. So it's exciting to reunite them, since they played lovers on Dallas.
MHTV: What are
the challenges to writing a Christmas movie? How do you get in the Christmas
mood in March?
SZ: Christmas movies are a breed unto themselves. When Jim and I were writing it, we had to think, how can we cram every single little bit of Christmas into every scene and shot? And then they still were yelling, “More Christmas!” And we were like, what more can we do? So you have to be clever about how you put it in so it seems organic. Scenes around a Christmas tree. Or because the movie is about the making of a TV show, we could have fun with shots, where it looks like it’s snowing, and then you pull back and reveal how we’re actually in sunny California. We even got meta at the end, talking about how they can turn this into a reality/soap opera for today’s day and age. Or they could go off and make a Valentine's movie. So we're hoping that the audience watches the movie and that it's so popular that we can continue with these characters and add a few more divas.
MHTV: Obviously Joan Collins and Jaclyn Smith
couldn't make it this time, but maybe later? Are there more divas on tap if
this goes further?
SZ: I literally have divas driving around my house, honking, asking, “Where is the script?” That would be the fun part. I have many friends like Joan Van Ark who I would love to be in the movie, and it would be great to bring Michele Lee into it.
The business now, I think it's just trying to get back up on its feet and figure itself out. I think Lifetime has been a little overwhelmed with the response to this movie already, before it has even aired, but I'm not. I told them, people are going to go nuts when they hear these five actresses are in this movie together! There's a need to celebrate older women, and especially these women with what they've accomplished in their lives and what they're still accomplishing, and yet also to have fun with it and not take it too seriously. So I think there's so many more stories to delve into with these characters and other characters in that age group that I hope we get to do that.
MHTV: Certainly,
if The Golden Girls could come up with seven years’ worth of stories, you've
got plenty to say as well.
SZ: I'm sure they have some ex husbands. It could be, “Hi, it’s me, Mort,” instead of Stan Zbornak.
MHTV: What is
the update with “Silver Foxes,” your gay male version of The Golden Girls
that you mentioned you staged as a play in Dallas this past spring?
SZ: When Jim and I first wrote “Silver Foxes,” we had a reading of it in my living room with Leslie Jordan and George Takei. We had created it for Logo as a half-hour sitcom, but when we found that no television network wanted to deal with an older demo or gay audience, we turned it into a play and had that sold-out run in Dallas, that Michael Urie from Ugly Betty and Shrinking directed. Actually, I found out today that there is a gay theatre company in Dublin, Ohio, that just secured the rights for the next production, which will be in September of 2024. So I'm going to go there for opening night. I won’t be involved in the play, but they want me to come and do a Q&A. Recently, we had a wonderful reading of the play in New York City that Michael directed. So we're really hoping to get it off-Broadway. That's our goal -- and then eventually, it becomes so popular that will become a TV series.
MHTV: With the
Divas, these women are famous and beautiful and beloved. Why do you think there
haven't been more vehicles for them to be doing stuff lately, and for others in
their age group? Do you think that it's
going to change with things like this movie, or maybe with “Silver Foxes?” What is it going to take to change
things?
SZ: Personally, I don't think even the success of this will change things. I think people in the entertainment business unfortunately have very narrow minds of what the audience is. And they don't see the value in portrayals of older people. Meanwhile, young people adored Betty White up until the very end. And these kinds of shows don't just attract an older demo, but it's hard for executives to see that. They attract all people. Most young people have grandparents that they love, and they could watch it and laugh with them -- or watch it and call them after and understand them more. Yes, of course, I'm always hopeful, but I've just been around this so much. And I am still a half glass full kind of guy, so I do hope that this can change things. But I'm going to keep working and pushing these kinds of shows and these kinds of characters, whether networks come running at us or not.
MHTV: Maybe the success of ABC’s Golden
Bachelor will help, too. And that
glass of yours, is it half full of champagne or whatever that that highly
alcoholic beverage was they were drinking in that late night scene?
SZ: Some crazy “Christmas concoction.”
MHTV: …That makes all of their truths come spilling out.
SZ: That’s what I’ll be drinking on December 2. A lovely woman named Tami, whom I met on the first Golden Girls cruise in 2020, sent me these two beautiful martini glasses, and a bottle of Ciroc vodka, my favorite. So I’ll be toasting the Divas.
